"It has been the misfortune of this age, that everything is to be discussed, as if the constitution of our country were to be always a subject rather of altercation than enjoyment." - Edmund Burke anticipates the Neverendum

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Annoyances (Scottish - miscellaneous)

Heard briefly a couple of fairly annoying items on the radio today. One had to do with the polis trying to track down the fuckwits that trashed Manchester. The Manchester cop kept referring to them as "so-called football fans" - the implication being that they weren't interested in football, only in having a barney.

As if it's a zero-sum game or something? The reality is some of them like watching football and smashing stuff up and starting fights. My tribe - and some of my tribe are complete and utter arseholes. There's just less of them than in the other tribe. Ahem...

Then there was the Scottish budget, which at the time of writing looked uncertain to pass. The thing that got me was John Swinney speaking in Parliament going on about how minority government presented challenges but it meant the other parties had an obligation to 'look beyond party politics' - which is to say, vote through the budget. They're in opposition you daft bastard - they're not obliged to do anything of the sort. They would be if they were in a coalition with you. But they're not. Hence the minority government status. Honestly!

"SCOTS language teaching should be boosted in primary and secondary schools, a government-commissioned study says."

This is the finding of a government-commissioned study? Now there's a fucking surprise. I used to argue with my dad about this cos he was into all this shit. Scots isn't a language, it's a dialect and like dialects everywhere it is - with all due respect to Rabbie Burns and all those who make a living in the kitsch industry that surrounds our 'national bard' - primarily spoken, not written. Anyway, the article helpfully provides a sample of Scots:

"IT WIS the best o times, it wis the waurst o times, it wis the age o mense, it wis the age o gypitness, it wis the epoch o belief, it wis the epoch o incredulity, it wis the saison o Licht, it wis the saison o Mirk, it wis the Spring o howp, it wis the winter o wanhope, we haed awthin afore wis, we haed naethin afore wis, we wis aw gaen straucht tae Heivin, we wis aw gaen straucht the ither wey – shortlies, the period wis sae muckle like the noo that some o its maist rummlesome lang-heidit fowk threaped its bein taen, for guid or ill, in the superlative degree o comparison anely."

It's from a 'Tale of Two Cities', which you might have been able to guess from the first line. If they hadn't provided a translation, I wouldn't have known what the rest of it meant either. "Muckle like the noo", indeed! Who the fuck talks like that? Nobody talks like that.

Finally, of all the things to worry about in this Calvinist shithole, I would have thought a takeover in Scotland by a religion that forbids the eating of pork and drinking alcohol wouldn't be very high on the list. Personally I worry more about things like: what if I'm out walking one day and a passing seagull has a heart-attack and plummets to earth whilst I'm looking up at the sky? Because I might lose an eye - or even be killed. Yet apparently there are some who think that not only is this possible, it's actually happening. See, for example, the comment from some fuck-nugget under this post on Harold's Place:

"I do take your report very seriously and it does show a consistent creep of Islamification of parts of Scotland.

I find it suprising (sic) that there isn’t lots of dissent from the Scottish people who are known for their sectarian views and forthright expression of them."

That was part of the comment that wasn't deleted - I'll spare you the rest. See that kinda shite? Ah pure cannae be daein' wi' it - know wha' I'm fuckin' sayin' 'nat?